WINNER OF 6 EUROPEAN FILM AWARDS including BEST PICTURE, BEST ACTOR, BEST DIRECTOR, and SCREENWRITER!

The title of the Swedish writer-director Ruben Östlund’s savagely entertaining new movie refers to an illuminated box outside a fictional museum of contemporary art in Stockholm. “The Square is a sanctuary of trust and caring.” The movie “The Square” may be many things — a high-wire ensemble comedy, a vivid character study, a tirelessly sustained volley of ideas — but it is no one’s idea of sanctuary. The movie mercilessly skewers the smug, self-congratulatory groupthink that often flourishes in artistic enclaves.

Östlund’s stages the human comedy in miniature: Nearly every scene is presented as an impeccably framed tableau, transforming characters and audiences alike into participants in a grand sociological study. Flitting from one sly comic digression to the next, the director conducts a broadly satirical investigation of both the modern art world and the troubled conscience of 21st-century Europe, indicting the hollowness lurking beneath its ostensibly progressive, humanist values…. It affirms that art, this movie very much included, can tell us things about ourselves that we’d prefer not to know. –Los Angeles Times

"Ruben Östlund's barbed take on the emptiness of modern art culture is savagely hilarious." Consequence of Sound"Great fun to watch….it's very entertaining to ponder after viewing. It lingers, both amusingly and disturbingly." NPRCast Claes Bang, Elisabeth Moss, Dominic West